And they'd dance to a Dixie lullabyMy mom got my wedding dress out of lay-away today, so I tried it on for my dad (and to make sure the shoes I got work). ... :-D It makes me so happy!!! I'm getting married... and I'm getting married to Jason, the most wonderful of boys. :-)
A picture of love beneath the southern sky
Oh my, what a beautiful life
Just like a Dixie lullaby
The photographer is booked, the caterer's reserved, the invitations are ordered, and now I've got my dress - things are starting to come together! 67 days...
In other news, Bekah and I went berry-picking Friday after I got home from work. There's a large wooded-ish area in front of our neighborhood where dewberries have always reigned supreme during the spring months. When we were younger my dad would take us out there to pick berries, which mom would promptly turn into a pie, so Bekah and I decided that we'd go out there and see what we could get. I've seen several people out there several different days on my way home from work, so we were worried there wouldn't be much left - but apparently their season's only just begun, because there was plenty, and a whole bunch more that weren't even ripe yet. I don't think it's been quite hot enough for them to really get going. So, we got a little over four cups, which is just enough for a nice dewberry pie - dad's absolute favorite. Even with the 'squitos and swampy-ness from having just rained, it was so much fun! A little bit of country in the city...
Sugarland, warm breeze blowing, long dirt roadSeveral weeks ago, a lady called the store and asked if we had 2 of a specific remembrance albums for first communion, which she needed by April 26th, 'cause she was going out of town on the 27th. We didn't have it in stock, but it comes from a company we order from all the time, so I took down the information and put it on the order form. Jan assured me that she would be finishing the order soon, so I left it alone and went about my business.
First time that I saw him was such a long time ago
I was sixteen going on seventeen
Bluebonnet Texas queen fell in love with a rodeo king
Down in Sugarland
A couple weeks later, the lady calls and asks about the books. I checked, and yes, they'd been ordered, but not until the 19th. That's barely enough time for them to get here by the day she needed them. I told her we'd call her when they came in, and hung up.
Fast forward to Thursday, the 26th. The lady calls again, and became rather irate when Carrie told her the books weren't here and probably wouldn't be until Monday. And I do mean irate. So we figured the best thing to do would be to call around to the other Catholic bookstores in Houston and see if anyone had two. I called five bookstores, going in order of distance from us (the closest being 30 - 45 minutes away) and finally found two at a store in Sugarland.
I grabbed a roll of quarters for toll money and a water bottle from the fridge, hopped in the car and headed down to Sugarland. The traffic, thank God, wasn't very bad at all for lunch hour, and I got right through the toll booths. $4 in tolls, 2 hours and 70 miles later, I had the two books back at the store, and the lady was coming to get them in a couple hours.
Customer service gives me a headache. But now I wanna live in Sugarland...
(By the way, the song Sugarland by the band Sugarland is about the town Sugarland, Texas - same place I went to. Also the home of Imperial Sugar.)
What I love about the southRegistering was exhausting... but fun. :-D It took almost all day Saturday - my feet were hurting by the time we were done. Silly 'nea forgot her comfy flip flops. Roaming the aisles at Target was interesting... we "shot" a bunch of stuff I didn't even think of 'till I saw it, and I STILL managed to forget mixing bowls. Oh well, that's what the internet's for!
If you need a Dixie Fix just come on down
That's what I love about the south
Southern belles with a drawl
Make you stop and drop your jaw
Come on y'all, shut your mouth
That's what I love about the south
I taught Avery and Stefan piano this week. Avery did amazingly well - he was in "the zone", and even though he hadn't practiced at all, after about 20 minutes he'd aced the song from last week. He was all excited, too... poor kid hardly ever gets praised for anything.
I ordered the Lutheran Book of Prayer from CPH yesterday, which I'm really excited about getting. Mom and Bekah have the hardback versions that I've been borrowing every once in awhile, so I was debating on getting that or the leather version that they have. I finally decided on the leather one, and now I can't wait to get it. I get jealous of the Catholics every once in awhile when we get really nice prayer books at the store... they be way off on theology, but they do really well with their books.
Oh look, there you go again
Puttin' on that smile again
Even though I know you've had a bad day
Doin' this, doin' that
Always puttin' yourself last
A whole lotta give and not enough take
But you can only be strong so long before you break
So
Fall
Go on and fall apart
Fall into these arms of mine
I'll catch you everytime you
Fall
Go on and lose it all
Every doubt, every fear
Every worry, every tear
I'm right here
Baby, fall
Forget about the world tonight
All that's wrong and all that's right
Lay your head on my shoulder, let it fade away
And if you wanna let go it's okay
That song is the most beautiful thing to grace country music lately. It's just... gorgeous. And oh-so-swoon worthy.
The first thing I saw when I walked into work this morning was a gigantic box of stuff from a store downtown that Jan gets junk from all the time. It was not a very exciting thing to see. I procrastinated as long as possible before diving in to it (which was less than an hour - there wasn't much else to do with Carrie and Charlotte there). It was, as expected, a bunch of junk - including a plaque for teachers (we never sell stuff for teachers, Carrie and I can't figure out why she buys it) that said "Teacher's care to the Core!". Yes, it actually had those typos. And yes, it was a pun on apples. If I was a teacher, I'd get real sick real fast of the apple jokes.
I was doing inventory before I left and I found a book on the non-fiction shelf that I hadn't noticed before - Brother Cadfael's Book of Days. Which is basically a year's worth of Brother Cadfael's wisdom taken from the Cadfael Chronicles series by Ellis Peters (which, if you like murder mysteries, are AWESOME). So, since I'd neglected to take my store discount off of $80 worth of icons I bought a couple weeks ago, I went ahead and took my discount on the $14.95 book ($1.50) and then discounted another $8 (the discount from the icons). I ended up paying somewhere around $5.90 for it - pretty shiny deal.
When I got home, I found my box from Barnes & Noble.com, which contained The Children of Hurin (I will NEVER be able to stop telling people how BEAUTIFUL that book is!!) and The Austere Academy. So I gained three books today! I can't wait to get into The Children of Hurin... I've gotta finish the Father Brown series (two more books to go in that), first.
To backtrack a little bit, on my way home from work, the drive which usually takes 20-25 minutes took me 50. And I was sick and tired of it when I was done, even with music therapy during the ordeal. I take the tollway feeder road (access road, service road, whatever y'all yankees call it) about 4ish miles as part of my drive, and just that much took 35 minutes. There was a major accident on the other side of the tollway - as in, people on the feeder couldn't even see it - and traffic was still backed up 4 miles. On the side with the accident, my neighbor came home and said it was backed up from the Galleria - which is a good 15 miles. That was probably my first major experience with really bad traffic with me driving (I've been in a heckuva lot worse more times than I can count with somebody else driving), and it was enough for me to say that I'm definitely not gonna drive from the bookstore to Conroe every day in rush hour traffic, if Jason ends up getting a job in Conroe. Bleck.
Tomorrow - er, well, in 15 minutes it'll be today - Jason and I are going to register at Macy's for our china and towels, and then hopefully to Target to register for everything else. I'm pretty excited - especially about my china. It took me forever to find a pattern I like, and this one it just perfect.
Jason's about done with the paper he's writing for school - we cannot wait for that to be over with (3 weeks!!) - and then we're gonna go watch TV. Y'all have a good weekend!
It's a long trip alone over sand and stoneCheck out the countdown. As of this post, EIGHTY DAYS 'till I get married to Jason. That is just shiny. And now, of course, I've just remembered I have to whip up a response card... but, the invitations are done except for printing! (Yes, Stan, you ARE invited. AND you'll get an invitation. ;-)) They'll hopefully be sent out mid-May or so. I'm getting so excited I could just explode!!
That lie along the road that we all must travel down
So maybe you could walk with me a while
And maybe I could rest beneath your smile
Everybody stumbles sometimes and needs a hand to hold
'Cause it's a long trip alone
Work... lately... has been work. Which usually isn't the case with my job - I typically very much enjoy what I do, but since my boss hired this new lady it hasn't been terribly enjoyable. To put it politely, she's rather... dense. She's been working here for over a month and still doesn't understand some of the most remedial tasks we do. This job is certainly teaching me patience...
Carrie, my co-worker, my favorite co-worker in the whole wide world (other than her mom, Melissa, who's on a kind of "sick leave" after hip replacement surgery), is sick with some kind of head cold. I'm trying desperately to avoid getting sick. Bekah had some kind of 24 hour flu on Friday, so I hauled Jason off to Conroe (actually - he hauled me, considering he drove me in his truck), but she's perfectly fine now and nobody else seems to have gotten it. 'tis the season, I suppose... especially since the weather's been wacked out lately.
Jason and I went with his mom up to Groesbeck, Texas to visit her side of the family on the 7th. It was awesome - it snowed. REAL snow. Lots and lots of it coming down so thick it was making Jason drive under the speed limit. It didn't stick that we saw (we left not too long after it started coming down thick so as to not get stuck 2 hours from home the day before Easter), but dang it was awesome. It's the most snow I've ever seen. It was the first snow that two of Jason's cousins had ever seen, and it was hilarious watching them in it.
On a completely unrelated note, I just ordered the Children of Hurin (and Book the Fifth of the Series of Unfortunate Events to get free shipping) from Barnes & Noble. That 40% off coupon was just too cool not to be used, plus, I've read a couple glowing reviews about it. I'm in the mood for some dark mythology, Tolkien style...